


A Birthday

by TheStrangeSeaWolf



Category: The Hour (TV)
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Fluff, Birthday Presents, Caricias, Dancing, Depression, F/M, POV Randall, Suicidal Thoughts, Tango
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:22:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28503669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStrangeSeaWolf/pseuds/TheStrangeSeaWolf
Summary: // Trigger Warning: Includes suicidal thoughtsIt is Randall's fiftieth birthday and his way of celebrating defers a bit from Lix's idea.
Relationships: Randall Brown/Lix Storm
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	A Birthday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoctorWanderer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorWanderer/gifts).



> This Randall differs a wee bit from the Randall in the [ The Hour Continued series.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2013298)

It had gone well. Nobody had said anything. They probably didn't know. And if they did know, they were respectful enough not to say anything.

He was glad he made it home.

Just being with himself, not anyone else.

Fifty years.

He poured a glass of orange juice and sat in his favorite armchair.

Fifty years.

He took up the Kierkegaard he was reading, looked at it, then put it down again.

Not the day for reading.

Fifty years.

Had it been a good life?

He wasn't sure.

Looking back, he hadn't achieved anything.

And he had lost so much.

Not that he would have deserved to have a daughter.

Or Lix.

Some people weren't meant to have a family.

Or to have another soul close to them.

Some were too strange, too damaged, too twisted.

That was okay.

He got what he deserved.

Fifty years.

Fifty years was good.

Half a century.

That was _enough_.

No one needed to live longer.

After that, a man became a burden to others.

Maybe there was a place for fathers and grandfathers past that age.

But not for people like him.

Needless dead weight of society.

He got up and opened the drawer on his old-fashioned bureau.

He took out the box.

One of the few things he had taken with him after his father died.

It contained his father's gun.

How the old man had been proud to own a gun!

“To keep the family safe.”

He always had said.

Not that he ever used it.

But it was there.

It had been something like his father's life insurance.

For Randall, it had always been a promise.

A promise that whatever happened, there was still that one way out.

That one way to end the pain.

Fifty years.

_Fifty years was enough._

Enough pain.

Enough sorrow.

Enough loneliness.

His gaze fell to something else in the drawer.

A photograph.

He took it in his hands.

It showed Lix, sitting on the edge of a fountain in some Spanish village.

He didn't recall the name of the village.

But he recalled the day and how Lix had looked that day.

His thirtieth birthday.

For one day, they had forgotten that it was war.

They drank, they sang, they danced, they landed in a room of a cheap hotel and neither one cared.

For one day, they had been happy.

He let his hand hover over Lix's face on the photograph and smiled.

“Please, forgive me, Lix!”

He murmured as he put down the photograph and reached for the box again.

A knock.

Who wanted something from him? It was too late for visitors. It was late, he could pretend he wasn't at home.

A second knock.

He sighed. Better to deal with it. The sooner he had dealt with it, the sooner it would be over.

A third knock.

He put the box back into the drawer and went to the door.

To his surprise, it was Lix.

She didn't look any different than twenty years ago. If anything, she looked even more beautiful, more determined, more sure of herself, stronger than ever.

“Lix?”

Was all he could manage.

“Happy Birthday, Randall! You didn't seem too fond of making a fuss of it in the office, so I thought I'd drop by tonight. Here.”

She handed him a small, wrapped box.

He stared down at it, then back at her.

“You know, usually, on such occasions, you just invite your visitor in and let them take a seat while you unwrap it and pretend to be surprised and delighted by the present, Randall.”

Lix smirked.

It brought his sense of reality back.

“Oh. Sure,” he cleared his throat, “please, come in.”

He gesticulated her to sit in the armchair next to his own. He went to fetch her a glass and a carafe with water to dilute her orange juice.

“Sorry, it's the only drink I can offer.”

He mumbled, as he filled her glas.

“That's okay, Randall,” Lix replied.

They clinked their glasses.

Lix's eyes traveled to the gift that still sat untouched on the table.

Randall hesitantly grabbed it.

He was not too fond of gifts.

He didn't need anything.

Gifts were meaningless to him.

For Lix, however, he would pretend he enjoyed whatever it was she had thought of.

He slowly, meticulously, unwrapped the box and folded the paper again, so it was a neat little square.

He opened the small cardboard box.

It contained a package of cigarettes, a fake rose, and an envelope.

The cigarettes were the brand he smoked in Spain.

The fake rose resembled the one she had in her hair when she danced with him in Spain.

He looked up, surprised.

Lix just smiled at him and nodded encouragingly towards the envelope.

 _“Invitation,”_ it read on the front in Lix's typical strong, determined cursive.

He opened it and read the words, written in the same strong, determined cursive:

_“This invitation is a one-off, exclusive invitation to Randall Brown, Head of News, who was born on this day in 1907. It is the offer to dance with Lix Storm like he did in 1937 on the same date. It is also an invitation to do the same 1967, 1977, 1987, and on all the other birthdays in between, and after that. This also serves as a reminder that there are already nineteen missed birthday dances, which he should redeem as soon as possible.”_

He held the small card in his hands and read the words over and over again, slowly trying to process what they meant.

His brain refused.

But it allowed him to grasp _one_ fact.

That Lix Storm didn't want this life, _his_ life, to end today.

That she wanted to have him around – and around _her –_ longer.

Much longer.

His hand hovered over her card like it had hovered over the photograph earlier on.

Then he got up and turned to his record collection. Pretending to search for the right recording gave him time to get his emotions under control, getting his eyes dry again. Lix shouldn't notice the impact her note had on him. When he had regained his composure, he carefully placed the dim black shellac record down on his gramophone and _Caricias_ started playing.

He couldn't keep his hand from trembling slightly as he took the small fake rose and placed it in her hair, before he offered her his hand.

She took it.

And then, they danced.

As if it was 1937 again.

As if it hadn't been twenty years since she had been in his arms the last time.

As if nothing had changed.

As if her invitation had made time traveling possible.

Perhaps, in a way, it had.

**Author's Note:**

> Randall chooses the tango [Caricias](https://poesiadegotan.com/2009/09/05/caricias-1945/). We don't know how good Randall's Spanish really is, but I got the impression that it is good enough and, well, Randall isn't the type that does anything random (including reading Kierkegaard, if you know that philospher's biography)...


End file.
